Please don't harass people for ignoring/disliking the story

[Deveryn]

1. They are already using spaghetti code and an old framework as excuses (lol, nice helms hrothgar.)
2. Are you telling me that the current devs don't treat themselves like rockstars? Btw, check out that new music video that dropped on their youtube channel!
3. Yeah, you should go further. This game has a lot of issues that EA snuck into WoW like the cash shop and the sudden glut of FOMO injected into the game.

Either way, no point in arguing. I tried when EQ/EQ2 got big and SoE went full EA, I tried when WoW got scooped up by EA, I tried when games becoming a service was becoming a common place, tbh I am tried of trying to save a hobby when the new blood would rather blindly defend companies than use some simple critical thinking to see how a bad idea can ruin an IP. All I can say is, enjoy the game! Your mindset has won the day and all we can do is brace for the future and all it brings~!

I was around for EQ/EQ2 and many others. I've seen many failures. WoW had some money and fame behind it. FF has it better and while their initial offering of XIV was garbage, they managed to salvage it. I've not seen anyone get that opportunity much less make something of it.

The Primals are actual rockstars making quality music people want to buy up and attend concerts for. It's a big deal for video game music, which has been much maligned for years. You wanna talk about people acting like rockstars? Let's talk about Brad McQuaid and his visions. Let's talk about Richard Garriott and his big failure in this genre. Let's talk about Chris Roberts fleecing his fans on this perpetual alpha.

[aveyond-dreams]

If only these "rockstars" were able to pull off better storytelling that didn't involve the worst use of time travel I've ever seen compared with the two worst villains in the entire FF franchise. Love how Yoshi confirmed himself recently that Dynamis wasn't even a concept they were thinking of during Shadowbringers, as if the writing decisions taken for Endwalker didn't already have enough controversy surrounding them. They had the opportunity to steer clear of the anime girl of hopelessness and destruction nonsense and instead went straight for it.

I think I'll gladly take the Metal Opera's story from Avantasia's albums over this, at least the rings on their fingers were justified unlike around here. Granted it's been years since I first heard it and I was definitely much too young at the time to make sense of their lyrics, but they definitely had more of a grounded and emotionally compelling air to them than the *cue sad music it's time to cry* *cue happy music these are your assigned friends* sort of thing going on in Endwalker.



The full synopsis of its plot can be found here, but beyond old metal albums it seems that even Kingdom Hearts of all franchises has been doing some bolder things with its storytelling lately.



If nothing else I suppose I should be glad of the numerous new releases coming up between now and January/February 2024 while this current filler arc runs its course, and wait until this alleged big event in 6.5 takes place to see what becomes of whatever remains of FFXIV's godless, souless world. Bereft of strong magic and fantasy elements, their only recourse was to send us off to the Void to go save it and banking on us caring about the fate of Vrtra's sister. Short of a rejoining or similar catastrophe on the scale of Dalamud's fall, I cannot see a compelling future that takes us into a 7.0 worth playing.

Whatever vision they have needs to be made clear as soon as possible. In the meantime FFXIV remains little more than a once-every-two-weeks chore for me to log in to and then forget about till the time comes around again. Doubtless others feel similar, and without our support I can only hope that the new target audience is enough to keep the game in a somewhat viable state. Given all I've seen so far however, 10 more years of FFXIV doesn't appear to be in the cards unless they get their act together.

[Lauront]

Also, I find it humorous how you love to question "majorities" but let people acting like the population is plummeting when it's the highest it's ever been just slide by

1) Red herring, since it has virtually nothing to do with "majorities", especially the kind you usually pull out of nowhere.
2) It isn't. It was at its highest in the lead-up to EW. It's since plateaud at 1.3m and that is a generous figure because it includes a lot of people who have yet to complete EW in large part. You can examine the Lucky Bancho figures if you doubt any of this. Meanwhile if you examine the only indicator we have of live figures - the Steam ones - they have dipped quite a bit and at a faster rate than 6.1's.

[Atelier-Bagur]

1) Red herring, since it has virtually nothing to do with "majorities", especially the kind you usually pull out of nowhere.
2) It isn't. It was at its highest in the lead-up to EW. It's since plateaud at 1.3m and that is a generous figure because it includes a lot of people who have yet to complete EW in large part. You can examine the Lucky Bancho figures if you doubt any of this. Meanwhile if you examine the only indicator we have of live figures - the Steam ones - they have dipped quite a bit and at a faster rate than 6.1's.

Even though this has always been the case within every expansion release. Clearly the game is dying.

[Lauront]

Even though this has always been the case within every expansion release. Clearly the game is dying.

To understand if it's the same as prior instances, you'd need to compare the breakdown of the LB surveys and see if they are following a similar pattern or showing disproportionately higher numbers of 'newer' players, and how well the game is managing to retain existing and new players. The survey's author himself has expressed concern at the trends he is seeing in the figures, especially in light of their purchase of new servers. I am not addressing claims that the game is "dying", just Striker's comment. So put the deflection tactics to rest.

[aveyond-dreams]

1) Red herring, since it has virtually nothing to do with "majorities", especially the kind you usually pull out of nowhere.
2) It isn't. It was at its highest in the lead-up to EW. It's since plateaud at 1.3m and that is a generous figure because it includes a lot of people who have yet to complete EW in large part. You can examine the Lucky Bancho figures if you doubt any of this. Meanwhile if you examine the only indicator we have of live figures - the Steam ones - they have dipped quite a bit and at a faster rate than 6.1's.

It's truly something that they were handed the fall of WoW, could've rearranged things in order to pump out a Deep Dungeon/Criterion Dungeon earlier than something like Island Sanctuary or even done the simple thing of adding some new rewards to PoTD or HoH...and instead they did nothing. So many obvious solutions to the current retention problem but not one of them reaches the ears of the king of final fantasy these days.

[Atelier-Bagur]

To understand if it's the same as prior instances, you'd need to compare the breakdown of the LB surveys and see if they are following a similar pattern or showing disproportionately higher numbers of 'newer' players, and how well the game is managing to retain existing and new players. The survey's author himself has expressed concern at the trends he is seeing in the figures, especially in light of their purchase of new servers. I am not addressing claims that the game is "dying", just Striker's comment. So put the deflection tactics to rest.

The only issue with trying to find patterns with LB and or Steam is trying to make assumption based on a portion of the FFXIV playerbase and the data won't ever be 100% accurate to the whole pie. It's just confirmation bias

[Atelier-Bagur]

It's truly something that they were handed the fall of WoW, could've rearranged things in order to pump out a Deep Dungeon/Criterion Dungeon earlier than something like Island Sanctuary or even done the simple thing of adding some new rewards to PoTD or HoH...and instead they did nothing. So many obvious solutions to the current retention problem but not one of them reaches the ears of the king of final fantasy these days.

Yup the dev team are just sitting on their asses and laurels rather than working on the game. Thank God for the almighty aveyond to clearly known what's up. His dad works for SE you see

[Lauront]

Yeah, the data needs to be caveated - for LB data, it can lead to over-estimates if misused as a live player count, because what it is trying to get at is the number of unique character logins that meet its threshold over the relevant time period (and it also can't discount alts, even if they may be rare in this game compared to, say, WOW), and that's in addition to any challenges scraping the Lodestone for this data brings with it. The creator of the survey thankfully provides quite granular breakdowns of figures, so you can examine it for trends in the playerbase's structure, if one is so inclined.

But here's the problem: any metric you use to tell me the game is at its "highest" player count is exactly the same as the one I will be referring to when disputing the claim that it currently is the case. Absent SE putting out its figures itself, we have fallible proxy data, but it not being 100% accurate is not the same as it not being usable at all. You simply go in with an understanding of the limitations. The same goes when people tout their financial figures to claim Yoshi is "carrying" SE. The game is performing well compared to their other titles, but we're looking at time-lagged and aggregated figures that are backward-looking in nature. They also don't tell you what the company would regard as a "success", because when it is pouring more money into the game (as it is for 7.0), it probably has criteria for how well the game has to perform, or even out-perform past trends to justify these investments.

I'll be candid: I don't think the game is dying. What I have is concerns about its future direction and I'm afraid the resident cheerleaders here aren't doing a particularly good job of changing my view of that. If anything, quite the opposite. They come across as wanting to stifle any discussion of its faults on a venue intended for feedback. And yes, I am rather sceptical of whether the game is making the most of the opportunities available to it.

[SturmChurro]

I'll be candid: I don't think the game is dying. What I have is concerns about its future direction and I'm afraid the resident cheerleaders here aren't doing a particularly good job of changing my view of that. If anything, quite the opposite. They come across as wanting to stifle any discussion of its faults on a venue intended for feedback. And yes, I am rather sceptical of whether the game is making the most of the opportunities available to it.

It definitely isn't, but it could be on a downturn. I was talking about this over Discord, but EW won't really be a wakeup call for any real changes. They'd have to have a spectacular failure of an expansion, and perhaps the arrival of competent competitors for that to really happen.